As I listen my thoughts fall to the worn varnish perimeter in which the congregation is sat and I realise that this space embodies the moment. The benches support those in the post and afore, the hall itself plays host to their efforts. The fridges in the catering kitchen are switched off and jimmied open, dormant until next necessary. On this unusually balmy evening they are not necessary, the car park is near full and flasks of water pepper the tabletops. I consider the previous 80 years. I think about people traveling to this place and I think about them traveling away. I can imagine these acts, but at this moment, we find ourselves nowhere else but here. Sharing our present in a temporary structure that betrays its past.

A porous and open relationship existed between all things, endlessly merging differences - of the organic and inorganic, body and stone and wood and water. Performing within this unity was not a luxury or choice; it was central to survival and continuity. There was no romantic paradigm of 'losing yourself' in the natural world, rather you were operating as an integral non-dominant part of a bigger picture, from which you would never consider extricating yourself as people do today. Farquhar, A. Untuning the sky 2007

Landscape and I. Landscape and I get on together well. Though I'm the talkative one, still he can tell His symptoms of being to me, the way a shell Murmurs of oceans. Loch Rannoch lapses dimpling in the sun. Its hieroglyphs of light fade one by one But re-create themselves, their message done, For ever and ever. That sprinkling lark jerked upward in the blue Will daze to nowhere but leave himself true Translation - hear his song cascading through His disappearance. The hawk knows all about it, shaking there An empty glove on steep chutes of the air Till his yellow foot cramps on the squeal, to tear Smooth fur, smooth feather. This means, of course Schiehallion in my mind Is more than mountain. In it he leaves behind A meaning, an idea, like a hind Couched in a corrie. So then I'll woo the mountain till I know The meaning of the meaning, no less. Oh, There's a Schiehallion anywhere you go, The thing is, climb it. (MacCaig. N, The Many Days Reprint 2010)